Morocco unveils new plan to help small farmers

2008-04-29

If Morocco's small farmers can be persuaded to shift away from grains and cultivate more productive crops, government planners foresee great financial rewards and thousands of new jobs. A broad new agricultural strategy proposes financial assistance and support structures to see the goal realised within the next ten years.

By Mawassi Lahcen for Magharebia in Casablanca – 29/04/08

[Lahcen Mawassi] Morocco's Minister of Agriculture Aziz Akhenouch presented a new national strategy to King Mohammed VI on Monday (April 21st). The programme aims to combat poverty by increasing the income of small farmers.

The Moroccan government announced a new strategy to promote and modernise the agricultural sector while also increasing incomes for small farmers. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Aziz Akhenouch, who presented the plan to King Mohammed VI on April 21st in Meknes, anticipates mobilising investments worth 11 billion dirhams per year, constructing 1,500 new projects and generating thousands of new jobs across the Kingdom.

The success of the plan, however, depends on the government's ability to convince farmers to participate, according to Ahmed Ouyach, President of the Moroccan Agricultural Federation. "Morocco has made significant progress on the level of individual and political freedoms," he said. "We are no longer as we were in the 1970s, when the state used to force the farmers to grow certain crops based on its priorities and policies, which it wouldn't share with anyone."

"As for now, the government can't force small farmers to quit growing grains and replace them with more productive crops," he said, concluding that instead, "it has to convince them to do so through dialogue and persuasion."

To persuade small farmers to replace grains with crops which produce higher yield and consume less water is one of the priorities of the new strategy. Tarik Sijilmassi, Chairman of Moroccan state bank Crédit Agricole, agrees that small farmers will generate bigger incomes by ending their reliance on grains. He pointed out that grains occupy 5 million hectares, or 71% of Morocco's total agricultural land. However, 3 million hectares cultivated with grains are not suitable for such a crop, he says, and therefore reap a very low harvest of no more than 8 kantars on average.

But getting small farmers to make the change requires money. The first step: bringing them together in unions, co-operatives or companies and providing these entities with sufficient funding.

"We have prepared various funding proposals to keep up with the government's new strategy, and each proposal targets a certain category of farmers," Sijilmassi explained.

Small farmers who cannot obtain regular bank loans will be financed through a specialised financial company created for this purpose by the government and Crédit Agricole. As for the big farmers, they can access regular bank loans as well as the special funds.

"We have launched several specialised investments funds, such as the OLEA fund for supporting the growth of olives, and the IGRANE fund, which is directed at making contributions to major agricultural projects [and] we are also working to launch 10 regional investment funds," Sijilmassi added.

Ahmed Hajjaji, Chairman of the Moroccan Agricultural Development Company, is also optimistic about the new government strategy.

"During the last two years, the government offered 80,000 hectares of agricultural estates for privatisation. We received requests from 1,500 investors, 14% of whom were foreigners from 12 countries. Due to the limited offers, we could only meet the demands of 20% of those investors. This means that there are currently 1,200 investors who desire to invest in agricultural projects in Morocco," he told Magharebia.

The last privatisation initiative of 80,000 hectares resulted in investments of up to 10 billion dirhams and 35,000 new job opportunities, Hajjaji said.

This time around, the government plans to offer 700,000 hectares of state agricultural land for privatisation.